The Dark and the Light

by Josephine Bell

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/josephinebell

  Contents

  Josephine Bell

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Josephine Bell

  The Dark and the Light

  Josephine Bell

  Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier in Manchester, England. Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin School, then trained at Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the University College Hospital in London she was granted M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. in 1922, and a M.B.B. S. in 1924.

  Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.

  Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in 1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped found the Crime Writers’ Association in 1953 and served as chair during 1959–60.

  … Dost thou imagine thou can’st slide on blood,

  And not be tainted with a shameful fail? …

  Vittoria Corombona

  My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,

  Is driven, I know not whither …

  O, happy they that never saw the court,

  Nor ever knew great men but by report!

  John Webster. Vittoria Corombona, The White Devil

  Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence and a kind of adoration of the mind and understanding of man; by means whereof men have withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation of nature, and the observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in their own reason and conceits.

  Francis Bacon. First Book, The Advancement of Learning

  … all true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, ascendent and descendent; ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments …

  Francis Bacon. Second Book, The Advancement of Learning

  Chapter One

  The wide field where the two men stood together was very green and lush, new washed by nearly a week of rain showers, the grass deep too, for it had been cut sparingly during that summer. But still a wide field, glowing in the afternoon September sun, with noble trees marking the edge to the west, throwing graceful shadows, and to the south a row of willows bending to a little silent stream.

  A scene, facing the trees, of peace, of comfortable relaxation; a scene inviting quiet discussion, learned serious argument, careful digestion of knowledge, retreat from strife. But just now spoiled for any such purposes by a fourfold outpouring, bludgeoning, grinding, screaming bedlam of noise.

  First, from the new building on the northern side of the field. A new house, in small red-brown brick, with Cotswold stone window embrasures, empty at present of glass. The walls had risen to roof level and it was here, upon wooden scaffolding, that men hammered and sawed and shouted and hauled beams and stone facings preparing to set a roof.

  Below, in the rough drive hidden behind the trees where loaded carts bearing fresh materials stuck fast in mud ruts, another party of men yelled at the horses and at one another as they struggled.

  Beyond this near activity, out where the grey spires of the tall churches and colleges of Oxford rose misty above the trees, a loud continuous hum spoke of unusual activity in the town. The citizens were on the streets as well as the scholars. This third noise was unceasing, heavy, mildly alarming.

  Not so the fourth noise, down by the alders. Here the sounds came as intermittent, high squeals signalling splashes, the joyful heartfelt pleasure of small children playing with water.

  Dr Richard Ogilvy smiled as he heard it.

  ‘They grow apace, those little ones. How they will delight in yon stream when they find it lies at the bottom of their own garden.’

  ‘Aye. And how the nursemaids will curse it,’ Sir Francis Leslie answered. The children were his: the new building was to be his own home.

  ‘You must see they be taught to swim,’ Richard went on. ‘Though I doubt me that small ditch carries more than a few inches of water at any time.’

  ‘After this week of rain?’

  ‘Shall we go test it?’

  But Francis did not move. He was indeed not in the best of tempers, for the rain that he knew must have filled the stream had hindered the work on the house. Not disastrously, but enough to make him anxious for its progress. Provided the roof be on by the end of October, the chimneys in place, the mullioned windows glazed before the snow came, then the work of finishing the interior, the lining and plastering of ceilings, the panelling, the doors and fireplaces, the kitchen spits, the bread oven, the cupboards, the sinks, might all be proceeded with throughout the winter. So that the finer decorating, the painting and gilding, the floors, the furnishing, the tapestries, the curtains, could be delivered and set in place when the roads had dried and the house itself had dried too. By mid-summer next at the latest, Sir Francis told himself, he looked to be installed in his new Oxford house, in his future home, his permanent future home.

  His brother-in-law, standing beside him, knew why he did not move towards his children and why this house, so costly, so well designed, under the influence of Master Inigo Jones, gave him at present more pain than pleasure, more anxiety than comfort. It was his own sister’s fault, his beautiful, foolish, cruel young sister, with her false values taken from his even more foolish mother and her wild idolatry of high society, her wild ambition to make her own way to them at any cost. It was a pitiful irony that Francis, knighted, as was not usual, for his excellent scholarship and heavy labours in the production of the King’s new Bible, should by this elevation have brought Kate so much closer to the fulfilment of her worthless desires.

  But he could not in any way approach Francis upon the subject of his failed marriage. A five year bondage, a bliss betrayed even before it began, the betrayal exposed barely six months later when the girl’s bastard son was fathered upon him and the double betrayal, his own friend’s careless act, revealed.

  Well, that major wound had been closed at last by the return of the friend and the fresh understanding between the pair. And yet this too was no subject for discussion unless Francis himself brought it up.

  So Richard Og
ilvy stood, his back to the busy workers on the building, staring at the trees and the willows on the stream’s bank, slapping the side of his long riding boot with the little switch in his hand and trying desperately to think of something to say that might turn his brother-in-law from his sad brooding.

  Another bout of splashing sounds from the hidden water prompted him to suggest, ‘We should go forward maybe. Is that not young George yelling in anger or in fear?’

  ‘Never in fear,’ Francis answered, his face relaxing into a smile. ‘Impatience, I’ll be bound. More probably with his sister, poor mite. He expects from her an understanding equal to his own, whereas at less than two years she hath barely words enough to convey her own thought, far less to compass his.’

  ‘And George is very forward for his three years,’ Richard said, relieved to have broken through Francis’s black mood at last.

  ‘An additional burden I place on you and yours,’ Francis observed, reverting instantly to his former manner. ‘But I promise you Celia shall be relieved. I plan to spend the winter months chiefly in London at my kinsman’s house where he still keeps room for me and mine. I shall take the children with me. Lucy—or rather her mother, Mistress Butters—is ever willing to superintend my nursemaid, a faithful soul, but over-indulgent.’

  ‘As I think she may be now at the riverside,’ said Richard, drily.

  He had noticed the girl come out from the screening alders and willows to peep about her, no doubt to see if her master was in sight. Finding both men facing her, though some distance away, she shot back and at once the agitated screams and shouts began again, this time with the girl’s voice added.

  A moment later two small figures broke cover, dropped to hands and knees, hauled themselves up again and began to stagger across the uneven grass, arms in the air, mud-spattered gowns falling from the bands that had held them up as they played. The long wet skirts hampered them further; the little caps, one plain, one decorated as a girl’s should be, with a little pleated lace ‘rose’, fell to the ground and were left behind for their red-faced guardian to recover as she pounded on to catch them, her own skirts dragging in the prevailing wet.

  Francis was now laughing in sheer delight at his babies’ struggles: delight too in the smiles that widened their little scarlet faces as they recognized him and drew nearer, arms outstretched.

  He caught them up, kissed them, settled one on each arm and turned to Richard.

  ‘Yon brook may be shallow,’ he cried with a great laugh, ‘but it lacks not in depth of mud. Swim, didst say, brother? They’ll not drown in water maybe, but what of suffocation in mud?’

  The panting nursemaid had now arrived, to curtsey and cringe and crave pardon for the state of her charges.

  ‘Nay wench,’ Francis told her. ‘We be not in London town where all mud is filth. A peck of clean dirt hurts no man, nor child either.’

  He walked off with the crowing children still in his arms, young George looking back over his father’s shoulder to make faces at the dishevelled nurse girl, but little Kirstie staring up into her father’s face, her thumb in her mouth.

  Having arrived at their horses, held by a groom at the edge of the road from the building site, Francis handed over his double burden, not without some protest and tears that he disregarded. Alone he went back to the house for a final few words with the clerk of the works, to the architect’s man and to such of the labourers themselves as were on the ground. All assured him that the roof would be laid before winter and the house ready for occupation by the summer of the next year. Francis nodded and thanked them and said he would be there again before long to see how they progressed. He did not tell them of his proposed absence in London.

  When he reached the horses again he found Richard mounted with George before him in the saddle. He swung himself to his own mount’s back and received Kirstie from the hands of the groom. She had nearly fallen asleep in the nursemaid’s arms while they waited and the move scarcely waked her at all, at which George laughed and jeered until his Uncle Richard told him to mind his manners to a lady or he would hand him over to the groom. The cavalcade then set off, the two gentlemen with the children in front, the groom with the nursemaid perched behind him, following.

  Arrived at Dr Ogilvy’s pleasant house a half mile distant, they found the yard occupied by two strange horses whose riders, dismounted, stood beside them, one quietly indifferent, one plainly fuming with impatience.

  The head groom came up to Richard with a sealed package from the quiet one.

  ‘Letters from London, master,’ he said. ‘Arrived this forenoon. Will there be answers to go back, sir, as usual?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Richard said. He still sat his big horse waiting for young George to be taken from him. When the head groom had lifted the boy down and given him to the dismounted nurse, Richard swung himself out of the saddle to take the package. ‘Keep the fellow over night,’ he said, turning towards the other man, who was beginning to look angry at the delay in dealing with him.

  The head groom took the family messenger by the arm and moved away with him, motioning to a stable lad to take his master’s horse. Meanwhile Francis had been relieved of his sleeping daughter and of his horse by the accompanying groom, who also had his own mount to dispose of, together with that of the messenger from London.

  Richard stood in the yard waiting for the other man to approach him and announce his business. This one, he saw, had an arrogant as well as an impatient air about him, so he decided to make the fellow step up to him instead of himself approaching as he would normally do to any man hampered with a horse already made nervous by unfamiliar surroundings.

  As the man stood his ground, his horse’s reins looped over one arm, a folded letter in the other hand, staring but silent, Richard said, ‘I am Dr Ogilvy, Dr Richard Ogilvy, master of this house. What is your business with me, my good man?’

  The good man frowned, but bowed slightly and very stiffly and said, ‘I come from the Queen’s Court with a message for Sir Francis Leslie, whom I was told I should find at this house.’

  ‘For me?’ Francis said, going up to him. He recognized the Queen’s livery. ‘From London?’

  ‘Nay, sir. From Dorchester, where I was given this letter to deliver in advance of her Majesty’s train. She expects to reach Littlemore today and rest there tonight. Indeed, I think she may already have arrived.’

  ‘Those cries and rumblings more than usual we heard from your land,’ Richard said, coming up to Francis. ‘Do you wait for an answer?’ he asked, as the messenger still made no move.

  Francis broke the seal and read. The letter, very short, very ill-written and ill-spelt, was from his wife. She wanted to come to her brother’s house as there was no place for her among the Queen’s Women of the Bedchamber. She hoped he could persuade Celia to receive her in spite of Richard’s stubborn disapproval.

  Having read it Francis handed it to Richard and waited.

  ‘So you be pleased, I have nought to say,’ Richard told him but turned at once to walk into the house.

  ‘You have waited long for the answer?’ Francis asked.

  ‘Long enough, sir, since you and the master were from home and the lady would not take the letter.’

  ‘How could she, seeing it was addressed to me?’

  The man shrugged, implying that any family having to do with any matter so close to the Queen and therefore so urgent—

  ‘Can you give a verbal message to my Lady Leslie?’

  ‘Verbal?’

  ‘By word of mouth. Can you seek out Lady Leslie in person? It will save your time if I do not have to go in and write and seal—’

  ‘Aye, sir. I will take such a message.’

  ‘It is very brief. Tell my Lady Leslie she will be welcomed by all at her brother’s house.’

  The man, suddenly abashed by the simplicity of this straight-forward message, nodded respectfully, mounted and rode away, while Francis, crumpling his wife’s request into a tight ball
, went in to give the news to his sister-in-law.

  Katharine Leslie arrived some hours later, after dark, accompanied by her personal maid and another manservant in the Queen’s livery, who rode off again without dismounting as soon as he had delivered his charges safely.

  Francis came out to meet his wife, lifted her down from her horse and took her hand to lead her into the house where Mistress Celia Ogilvy stood waiting to receive her.

  ‘You are welcome, my lady,’ Celia told her, dropping her brief curtsey. She had heard much of Francis’s wife in the four years and more since last she had been hostess to her for her first, highly embarrassing, lying-in. She was amazed by the woman’s present appearance.

  A blazing beauty, no flaw, no sign of strife, of suffering, such as had aged her young husband and written lines of grief and disillusion about his clever, sensitive eyes and mouth. No sign at all of her two rapid, further pregnancies, giving Francis his own children to compensate for that first, disastrous bastard foisted upon him. A young, successful, breathtaking beauty, very confident of her own developed powers, very conscious of their success, very ambitious, but careful withal.

  ‘I crave pardon, sister,’ Lady Leslie said, with a disarming smile, ‘for such short notice of my visit. I thought to come to Oxford with the Queen and then present myself to you and my brother.’

  ‘Not to your husband, madam? Not to your children?’

  ‘I did not know they were with you, madam,’ Lady Leslie said, a little colour showing in her cheeks in spite of their white coating of cosmetic. ‘That is, the children. Francis, of course—’

  ‘The children have been here all summer,’ Celia answered, calmly, disregarding the lie and its partial retraction. ‘Did you not know that? Except of course for little Francis, who is still with his grandparents in Scotland, where, I am told, all at Kilessie dote on the child.’

  She longed to say that it was at Kilessie the boy’s own father, Alec Nimmo, had proposed to meet his son without revealing himself as more than Francis Leslie’s former college friend. But she refrained. If her sister-in-law was to stay in her house there must be no throwing up of the past, no friction of any kind if that were possible. Besides, there had been no news from Alec of his visit. Thinking of Richard, forthright and not at all respectful in his manner to his sister, her wish for peace might in any case be a vain hope.